


Statement of Captain Jack Harkness

by AccidentalVillainy



Category: Doctor Who (2005), The Magnus Archives (Podcast), Torchwood
Genre: Episode: s01e13 The Parting of the Ways, Gen, Original Statement (The Magnus Archives), Statement Fic (The Magnus Archives), Temporary Character Death - Jack Harkness, pre-torchwood series, season 1 sceptic Jon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:55:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25189816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AccidentalVillainy/pseuds/AccidentalVillainy
Summary: Statement of Jack Harkness regarding the circumstances of his death. Statement #0021701 audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.
Relationships: Ninth Doctor & Jack Harkness & Rose Tyler
Comments: 10
Kudos: 63





	Statement of Captain Jack Harkness

Statement of Jack Harkness regarding the circumstances of his death. Statement #0021701 audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.

Statement begins.

Never filled out one of these things before, though I’ve seen quite a bit that would probably fit your archives. You seemed surprised when you found out about Torchwood, but is it really that strange that there would be other organizations similar to yours? It’s a human thing I guess, cataloguing and recording knowledge, even about thing’s we should probably leave alone. The largest library in the galaxy will be built by humans, an entire planet of stored knowledge for all to see and know.

Even exchange though right? I give you something for your archives you give me back that Coridian piece your artifact storage picked up. Honestly, I’m a little surprised this kind of mix up doesn’t happen more often.

I’m Captain Jack Harkness, I am immortal, and this is the story of my death.

Now immortality’s not something I normally advertise, tends to cause problems and it’s really the kind of trump card that works best when people don’t know about it. It was an accident near as I can tell, not that I remember much of it, I figured most of it out by trial and error. I’m not invulnerable or anything, I can still get hurt or injured it’s just that anytime I should be dead I just… get back up. Pretty useful, can’t tell you the number of exes that have gone homicidal on me.

I should probably back up a bit and explain that I am a time traveler and that aliens are real. I know how it sounds, and it’s not like I have much proof to give you. Most of what you’d call proof is safely imprisoned where hopefully it’ll never see the light of day again if we’re doing our job right so you’ll just have to take my word for it.

I used to be a time agent, a professional time traveler. It seemed like a good enough gig at the time, very prestigious, they just took a little more from me than I was prepared to give I guess. All that really matters is that I had access to time travel, and even though I was born in the early 31st century, I ended up hanging around the mid 20th century as an American army captain in the second world war. That’s how I met the alien known as the Doctor. Given your criteria I’m sure you have at least one other statement about him somewhere in this place. He gets around. Anywhere in the universe, if there’s trouble there’s a good chance you’ll find him, and earth’s an old favorite of his. Not that he’s easily found when he doesn’t want to be. Something I know all too well.

He’s a time traveler as well, actually comes from a race of time traveler’s known as Time Lords. Never thought I’d actually meet one, most people at the agency thought they’d gone extinct.

We ended up travelling together for a while. Me, the Doctor, and Rose Tyler. Rose was human, he’d picked her up somewhere in the 21st century if I remember right. Not far from now actually. She was the one I met first. Showed up in the middle of the London blitz still dressed like it was the 21st century and faking that she was a time agent. Saved my life that night more than once though, the both of them did. So, I fell in with them. It was easy. We got along well enough and having left the agency I was kind of at loose ends. It was a good time, traveling around, having fun, causing problems, solving problems. I honestly would have been happy to do that forever, but then we got trapped.

Satellite 5, 2002nd century, it was a tv studio of all things. We were separated, each of us kidnapped to a different show. Turned out to be a death trap of course, you don’t often get kidnapped to nice places. They were killing off the contestants in all their shows. A modern day colosseum. The station was controlled by Daleks, more aliens, and not friendly ones. Daleks are galactic bogeymen they wiped out whole star systems in their day. They were supposed to be extinct, and there millions of them were, just waiting for the right moment to return to the galaxy.

The Doctor didn’t take it well. His people and the Daleks had been at war for centuries across centuries. When you’re a time traveler war takes on a whole new meaning of hell. He didn’t talk about it much but there’s a reason both Time Lords and Daleks were thought to have died out in the time war.

And here there were millions of them. We didn’t have many options. The Doctor rigged a way to kill them, but we didn’t have time to figure out how to direct it. You have to understand Daleks don’t have weaknesses. They live in armored tanks with weapons that can level a city. Just one could topple a country. So know that when I say the only way to win was to set off a weapon that would destroy the planet as well as the Daleks that it was the only way. Humanity had colonies we would rebuild. Trillions would die, but one planet against the galaxy… In the end though I didn’t have to make that decision. The Doctor would be the one to set off the Delta Wave, he would be the one who had to square that. I just had to hold them off long enough for him to do it.

And I did. We blockaded the six upper levels of the station so they couldn’t teleport in and barricaded each corridor and level. Most of the satellite’s staff hid in the lower levels away from the fighting but a few of them stood with us. Mostly though it was the other contestants, the other victims who decided to fight. We had a few transmat guns with us, wouldn’t do much overall but it could maybe slow them down, buy us more time. We were dying anyway if the plan succeeded, we just needed to make sure we took the bastards with us.

I’m pretty sure that was the first time I died. Right there on that space station, almost out of hope, fighting for time, a dozen humans against millions of Daleks. Not the worst way I thought I’d go out. I don’t really know what happened. One moment I was there at the barricade, the next I woke up and the Daleks were gone and we were still here. I figured I’d just gotten knocked out somehow and they had just gotten past me, so I headed up to the top floor where the Doctor had been working.

The Doctor’s ship is not a ship in a traditional sense. The TARDIS doesn’t fly much, instead it phases into and out of reality wherever it goes making a very distinctive noise when it does so. That sound has brought hope and despair to hundreds of worlds and is possibly the most recognized sound in the galaxy. That is the noise I heard as I finally made it back to where they were supposed to be. Just in time to see the TARDIS fade away like it was never there at all, and I was suddenly stranded alone in the 2002nd century. I can’t really blame them for leaving me behind. They probably thought I was dead. Hell, I probably was dead for a while there.

I never did find out what happened, not really. From what the other survivors said the Daleks just vaporized in a golden light. It couldn’t have been the Delta Wave that would have taken us out with them but no one could tell what it had been. All the Daleks gone in an instant, and ever since then I’ve been unable to die. Some kind of miracle.

Well abandoned on that space station I did the only thing I could think of. I still had my vortex manipulator from when I was a time agent. Cheap and nasty time travel as the Doc would say. Not as pretty as the TARDIS but it got the job done. I knew the Doctor would show up on earth again, like I said it’s an old favorite of his. I just had to be there when he did.

I went back to 1869 and got stuck. I died in the landing and the vortex manipulator broke when I got picked up by Torchwood, never really got it working again. It wasn’t that bad though I just had to take the long way through time. Torchwood investigates alien occurrences, so I figured if anyone would be able to find the Doctor it’d be them. So now I’m just waiting, I can’t die so it’s not like there’s a time limit, but I’ve been looking for him for almost 200 years.

Almost makes me think he doesn’t want to be found.

I’m not about to give up looking though, he owes me. I died my first death for him so the least he can do is try and answer some of my questions, and I’ve had a long time to think of some.

When I say I’m immortal the first thing most people assume is that I can’t die. That’s not true at all though. I do die. I die every time. I just come back afterwards so I can die again and again and again and again and again and again… I’ve died so many times I’ve lost count. It doesn’t get easier. You’d think it would. You’d think that after a while you’d get used to the feeling and you wouldn’t fear death anymore. It’s still horrible though. You don’t lose the fear of death, you do get sort of used to it though. You come to expect the pain of your body shutting down sometimes quick like a painful thunderclap and sometimes drawn out over agonizing days. I know what it feels like every way there is to be killed. Gunshot to the head’s usually quick so that’s not so bad. Long as they hit the brainstem or use a large enough caliber. Sometimes it’s not enough though. I once got shot in the head and held on for ten days before my boyfriend finished the job and put me out of my misery. Needless to say, we broke up after that. Think I mentally scarred him a bit, he didn’t say much during the break up talk.

You’d think I’d be like the opposite of death since it can’t seem to keep hold of me. I think that’s wrong though I think that because I have died more than any other person I am closer to death than any other person. I think I am closer to death than to life.

I’m aging though. It’s been hundreds of years but I am. What happens to someone who can’t stay dead when they get old?

I hope I’m wrong.

I hope I can stay dead.

When the time comes.

Statement ends.

 _Aliens and time travel_. While there is at least _some_ evidence of the supernatural, to my knowledge there has _never_ been any proof of the existence of aliens and quite frankly I question this statement’s place within our archive. While the Torchwood Institute does exist, any connection to aliens seems to be relegated to the realm of conspiracy theories. The Torchwood Institute is a government defense contractor. While perfectly legitimate these sorts of entities frequently draw the attention conspiracy theorists, and while I am sure our government has many projects they’d prefer to keep under wraps, I am quite certain _aliens_ are not among them.

Sasha was able to find the service record of a Captain Jack Harkness who served in World War II, however there is no evidence of his having been a… _time traveler,_ nor of him having survived the several decades since. As a matter of fact, the only other records we can find of Captain Harkness indicate that he died in the war in 1941.

As for this alien doctor there is precious little to go on in this statement. As Mr. Harkness couldn’t even be bothered to give us this doctor’s name I believe him to be a fabrication. There are several doctors mentioned in our archive and without any further way to narrow it down I can see no way of determining if any of them are relevant. Martin has compiled a handful of older statements which refer to a Doctor or Lord Doctor with no other name, however I believe that to be something of a dead end. Given the lack of overlap between instances it seems unlikely they are related. 

There _is_ a Rose Tyler working as a sales clerk in London, though when Tim went to talk to her she denied any knowledge of the events in question. I find it hard to see her becoming a time traveler anytime soon.

The rest of the statement is entirely unverifiable having taken place in the future and I believe we have wasted enough time entertaining this farce as it is.

End recording.


End file.
